But an arts center has grown here despite the odds. At one end of the spacious hall of the church, young drug addicts and runaway teens learn to hone their own music in a recording studio. Artists like textile sculptor Clare Jackson work in studio spaces in an unused choir loft. Seven times a week, a dancer choreographs new works on a sprung wooden floor that professional dancers would covet.

In the sanctuary, a concert pianist rehearses on a Steinway grand, reveling in the excellent acoustics. Visitors can ruminate over the original art and poetry in the church gallery and winding corridor. A small office has become a computer media center, where teenagers learn the salable skill of designing Web sites and CD jackets. Evidence of creativity by parishioners of all ages festoons the walls, and fills the corners of the sanctuary. This is not your typical English Baptist church.

Grote is pastor to 60 white and West Indian Britons, generally 50 and older, many of them connected to the suburb's auto industry. Six years ago, he transferred his family from a mission in El Salvador to the pastorate in Oxfordshire. "We had no money, we had a minimum of resources to offer, and hardly any staff but we did have space," Grote says. "So we offered space."

Grote sensed that the church would fail unless it could "find its center outside the center—not find its identity within an inside core and work out, as many ...